Another wrote: “Every ordinary thing has life, why torture a rat? If you were a rat, wouldn’t you find this cruel after you were killed? Stealing rice is part of a rat’s nature. It did it to survive.”

Changing attitudes

The largely negative reaction to the viral rat photos shows how attitudes in China – a country once notorious for cases of animal cruelty – are changing.

Jason Baker, Asia vice president of international campaigns for PETA, which denounced the rat photos as a “sick stunt,” said the reaction “made it clear that people don’t believe any animal should be treated like this.”

“The inability to empathize with the plight of the most helpless among us quite rightly horrifies caring people everywhere and is a cause for concern in the community,” Baker said.

In 2014, China revoked a law making animal testing mandatory for cosmetics, while a study by researchers from Nanjing Agricultural University in the same year found a majority of respondents supported stronger animal welfare laws.

While researchers said in China “animal welfare is still at the early stage of development,” they found the “necessity of establishing animal welfare laws is widely recognized by the public in China.”